


I Don't Deserve It (But I Want You Anyway)

by TheKeeper_of_TheSmut



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ed didn't get frozen at the docks, Fluff, I couldn't think of a better title, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Nightmares, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 08:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12128727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheKeeper_of_TheSmut/pseuds/TheKeeper_of_TheSmut
Summary: Edward has a nightmare about Oswald leaving him and doesn't want to talk about it. Oswald assures him he's not going anywhere and wants Ed with him for the rest of their lives, and he does it in the best way possible





	I Don't Deserve It (But I Want You Anyway)

**Author's Note:**

> Day one of nygmobblepot week.  
> Prompt: Murder Husbands

The first sign that something is wrong is when Oswald is rather rudely wakened by a sharp pain in his bad knee. Huffing, he tries to squirm away from the uncomfortable throbbing and go back to sleep when he feels the bed beside him shake. Cracking an eye open, Oswald scans the room in search of an explanation. There’s no immediate cause for concern that he can see, so he closes his eye again, (not that he had it very open to begin with).

“No, Oswald. I’m….no!” Startled Oswald jolts up.

“Edward?” He turns to look at his sleeping boyfriend.

Edward appears to be having a nightmare, if the way his face is scrunched up and his hair is curled with sweat is anything to go by. The brunette thrashes again looking as if he’s making a desperate lunge for something, or someone.

“Oswald!” The shorter man’s heart hurts at the broken desperate sound his love’s voice has taken. The sharp pain in his leg must have been a result of Edward involuntarily kicking him.

Oswald leans over and brushes the sweat soaked bangs off Ed’s forehead.

“Edward, wake up. It’s just a dream.” Ed whines.

“No, no, please. Real. Want this to be real.” Frowning, the raven haired man leans closer and shakes the taller man’s slim shoulder.

“Ed, wake up!” There’s a brief moment where he thinks it worked. Ed tenses like he’s about to wake suddenly from a horrible dream, but he stays tensed. Oswald watches with mounting concern as Ed draws his long legs closer to his body and curls into a defensive ball. Whimpers and sobs occasionally break forth from the ball of sadness his lover has become.

Oswald lets out a concerned noise and tries to wrap an arm around Ed, hoping a source of comfort will make him uncurl.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry. My fault. Please, don’t go. Please.” His muttering has gone from half jumbled phrases to sobbed out sentences. Tears run down Ed’s cheeks as he wraps his arms tighter around himself.

“Shhh, Edward. I’m here, you’re ok. I’m not going anywhere.” Oswald soothes, wiping the tears off the other’s cheek and pressing kisses to it. He settles down, wrapping his arm around Ed and pressing closer so that  he can bury his face in the taller man’s neck.

Oswald starts humming, lips pressing kisses along the pale expanse of skin in front of him. His fingers idly trace patterns  across Ed’s hips and drift under the hem of his shirt to trail across the skin above his  pajama pants. Ed slowly relaxes in his arms, uncurling slightly from his defensive position. Oswald keeps humming and nuzzling into his beloved’s warm neck. He wants to drift off, but his leg still aches from his bed partners unintentional abuse and he’s worried if he stops Ed will have bad dreams again.

Edward has nightmares often and usually wakes up having panic attacks, not unlike Oswald after Arkham. Unlike Oswald, Edward will simply get up, checking to make sure he didn’t disturb Oswald’s slumber, and go to his study to work the rest of the night. At first he’d been able to pass it off as just having gotten up early, but Oswald eventually caught on. He’d thought he’d gotten better at catching Ed trying to sneak off after nightmares, thought that he’d helped Ed get over the last of his trauma, apparently he’d been wrong.

He’s so lost in his thoughts he doesn’t notice Ed stirring until he feels those long thin fingers intertwine with his where they’ll still tracing nonsense patterns into his skin.

“Oswald?” Ed’s voice is quiet, slurred with sleep. Oswald smiles at the sound, leaning up to kiss his cheek.

Ed hums and rolls over in Oswald arms so that he’s facing the other, bringing their still clasped hand up between them and pressing a kiss to Oswald’s knuckles.

“You were having a bad dream.” Ed’s face crumples, apparently hoping Oswald wouldn’t bring it up.

“I didn’t mean to wake you, I can go down-” Oswald cuts him off with a kiss.

“You will do no such thing.” It’s quiet for a moment.

“I wish you’d tell me when you’re having trouble sleeping. You always help me when I have nightmares. Is it because they’re about me?”

“No! Yes, it’s complicated. I help with yours because I love you, and most of your bad dreams are about me. It’s my fault.”

“Nonsense, we both made mistakes. I thought we were past that. I might occasionally dream about you not loving me and about being shoved in the harbor, but that’s why I wake you up. So you can hold me and tell me you love me and that everything is ok now. I want to do that for you.”

“It’s different.”

“How?” Ed mumbles something, face turned away from him and into the pillow.

“I didn’t hear you, Ed.”

“I don’t deserve it.” Oswald makes a choked noise, struggling to reassure his lover that he deserves whatever it is he thinks he doesn’t.

“Hear me out, please.” Oswald reluctantly agrees.

“I know we both did things we regret, but I started it. It’s my fault. I was supposed to get wine and come home and instead I got Isabella. I know you, Oswald. I know you’re jealous, possessive, I should have known. I just, I didn’t want to see it. I told myself I wasn’t the nerdy little forensics guy, the loser who let everyone walk all over me. But deep down I was still trying to be ‘normal’.”

Oswald nods, thumb stroking across the back of Ed’s knuckles where they’re still holding hands.

“I was content to hide in your shadow, I never thought about being my own criminal. And I suppose if I’d never met Isabella and things had gone differently I would have been content doing that forever, but some part of me would have wanted more. That dark side of me I thought I had under control. But that’s the problem, he’s not controlled, he has no morals, he just is.”

He takes a deep breath. He’d explained to Oswald his hallucinations and other self before, He’d been opening up to him about different speculations involving his horrid childhood and how they played a part, but he was never good at talking about these things.

“Isabella was bad for me, she aggravated that split between my two sides, but at the same time I’m grateful. Because I would have never known I could be more. I knew it wouldn’t work between her and I, but I was compelled to try because that’s what the old me wanted. A house in a nice neighborhood, a wife, kids, normal. I don’t like kids, if that’s any indication of how messed up it was. Knowing you won’t be happy but wanting it anyway.”

“I guess there go my plans for children.” Ed wrinkled his nose.

“You really want kids? It’s not the child themselves I dislike, it’s the noise, and the mess. I just, ugh.” Oswald chuckles and kisses Ed’s nose.

“Perhaps not little children then.”

“Ivy’s not little and she’s louder and more messy than anyone I’ve ever met. And I worked with Bullock.”

“Touche.” Edward smiles sweetly and kisses Oswald softly.

“I knew how you felt about me, on some level. I just couldn’t accept it. And then when I found out what you did to Isabella, I saw it coming, but you lied to me. You let me go after Butch and Tabitha and made me look like a fool. And HE couldn’t allow it. I took it too far, I’ve always regretted it, I snuck in once and saw you sleeping on the couch, waiting for me. I almost stopped then and there. I cried while digging up your father and begged his forgiveness. I used him to hurt you and it was disgusting, I’ve always hated myself for that. It was vile. I hope you know I put him back next to Gertrud.”

“You’ve apologized about a hundred times and showed me his grave, so yes, Ed. I know.”

“I hurt you, I shot you, and wanted to jump after you, all because I couldn’t accept myself. I couldn’t truly look at how deep the dark parts of me ran. Even though I missed you so much, I wanted to throw myself at your feet when I saw you in the other cage. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wanted so badly to kiss you and beg forgiveness, and hold you and never let you go, but I couldn’t because it was my fault. I saw how you looked at me and….It….I…” He hiccups a sob and Oswald presses a little closer.

“I mess everything up, anything good I ruin. I saw your feelings and I wanted to return them and instead I shot you. I needed you to hate me, because I deserved it. And then when you tricked me and brought me to the docks, the place I made the biggest mistake of my life, I couldn’t do it again. But I don’t deserve this,” he gestures between the two of them.

“I don’t deserve to wake up next to you, or joke about children, or kiss you goodnight, or throughout the day, I don’t deserve your comfort. I’m waiting for you to realize that, I guess.”

Oswald reaches out and lifts Ed’s chin so they’re eye to eye with each other.

“You’re going to be waiting a very long time then, Mr. Nygma.” With that he seals their lips together.

He kisses Ed until he’s breathless, face flushed and lips swollen from the soft bites Oswald had placed on them. Oswald licks across his lips and kisses him again, moaning softly as Ed’s tongue comes to rub against his. The older man pulls away first causing Ed to whine.

“Wait here,” he instructs before trying to get out of bed. The second he puts any weight on his leg however it wavers under him and he cries out.

“Os! What happened?” Ed’s by his side in an instant, arm wrapped around him and gently maneuvering him back against the headboard to look at his knee.

“Nothing, it’s silly.”

“It looks like you banged it against something. It wasn’t like this before we went to bed…..Did I do this?” Oswald groans, his boyfriend looks like a kicked puppy.

“Ed, it was an accident,” But Ed’s already out of bed and off to the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom. Oswald groans louder, and pouts when Ed returns with his wrap/brace that he’s supposed to wear at night.

“Don’t fight, please. It’s just us, and I’m not judging you for wearing something to help with pain. And here, take your pills.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute, Nygma.” Oswald lets Ed wrap the brace around his knee and swallows the pills with a sip of water from a paper cup that Ed keeps a stack of in the bathroom.

“What were you going to get? I’ll retrieve it.”

“In my study, in the top right drawer is a small black box.” Edward looks at him for a moment before his eyes widen.

“O-oswad.”

“Well, don’t get emotional before I ask you, which I can’t do without the box.” Ed rushes from the room and Oswald hears him thunder down the stairs, miss the last step, and crash into the wall. He just barely manages to turn his manic laughing fit into a snort of amusement.

There’s more crashing and Oswald realizes Ed probably didn’t turn on a light.

“Good heavens, I’m marrying a man with the elegance and coordination of an intoxicated giraffe.”

A few minutes later Ed appears back in the room with the box and a few marks that will probably bruise.

“Did you hit every wall in the manor?”

“Uh, I picked everything up and nothing broke. Might have chipped the edge of the last step though.”

“Shall I kiss your boo-boos and make them better?” Ed sticks his tongue out.

“Hurry up and ask me, before I change my mind.” It’s said teasingly but Oswald can see the eagerness in the other’s dark brown eyes.

Ed sits next to him on the bed, fidgeting nervously as he hands over the box. He looks half dazed and half anxious, and his eyes are watering, all of which can be attributed to a possible concussion received from crashing into walls.

“Edward Nygma, you’re the only person I have ever been in love with. You were my first crush, my first love, and my first heartbreak. While that time might have been distressing for both of us it helped us grow, especially me. I didn’t know how to be in love, and now I think I have a vague idea. There is no one else like you, and I have trouble understanding you sometimes, and I’m going to get frustrated and say things I don’t mean. I can’t promise to be perfect, but I want to try and make you happy for the rest of your life. I can never thank you enough for giving me a second chance, and giving me my first kiss and now you’re going to make me the happiest penguin on earth. Will you marry me, and be my first and only darling husband?”

He opens the box to reveal a silver band with one emerald and one amethyst nestled in the center, an umbrella engraved on the emerald side and a question mark next to the amethyst. The words ‘worthless to one’ are engraved alongside them. There is a matching ring in the box that says, ‘but priceless to two’ across it.

Ed’s kissing him before he can get the box all the way open, the kiss tastes like salt from the tears running down both their cheeks.

“It was a lovely speech, but you could have just asked me.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes!” Oswald slides the ring that says ‘worthless to one’ on it onto Ed’s finger.

“It’s perfect,” Ed breathes in awe, and kisses Oswald again, sliding the other ring onto the shorter man’s finger.

“And so are you, darling,” Oswald responds. They don’t go back to sleep, instead they stay up kissing and giggling and admiring their rings.


End file.
